


The End of the Line

by ruebellab



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Eventual Smut, F/M, Romance, Wild West
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2018-09-16 00:51:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9266471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruebellab/pseuds/ruebellab
Summary: They say there’s a ghost - that he’s a dead man, but Miss Karen’s seen enough to know one thing.Dead men don’t feel, they don’t hurt, they don’t care - so if there’s a man out there, she knows he ain’t a ghost, he’s broken maybe but he’s not dead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> song: walk away - the steel wheels
> 
> there's a winner in every place  
> there's a heart that's beating in every page  
> the beginning of it starts at the end  
> when it's time to walk away and start over again

There are worse places to stop than hell’s canyon, but she’s damn sure there are better places too and it’s not like she’s got a choice, this is the end of the line.

It could be worse, this little town - no one knows her name, no one knows her face and there’s an open room at the saloon. If she pours hot coffee in the morning and whiskey shots at night, she can stay free of charge. If she rustles her skirts and bats her lashes she can take a few extra coins to fill her purse and maybe one day she’ll have enough to move on.

Until then, Hell’s Canyon is the end of the line and as good a place as any to quit running for a while.

If she was willing to do more than just rustle her petticoats, she knows she could be outta here sooner. There’s a brothel on the other side of town - the old man at the station had turned his head, and pointed her that way when she had told him she was looking for work.

So things could be worse - a lot worse and she considers herself damn lucky, because there’s only one reason Miss Karen Page is gonna lift her skirt in this town and it has nothing to do with gold and everything to do with the cold piece of metal strapped to her thigh.

It’s the end of the line, but for now it’ll do. 

-

She pours him coffee in the morning and whiskey at night.

Not every night, mind you, he is Sheriff after all, and he likes to set the town by his example.

Temperance, patience, forgiveness - Sheriff Murdock is a good man.

He’s kind to her, sweet even - and she’s not sure what she’s done to deserve his attention, but he’s charming and easy on the eyes and if there’s anything she could use right now, it’s a little more kindness.

She wonders at first if he can smell the blood on her, see that it’s stained her hands in a way that’ll never come clean - if that’s the reason he lingers over his coffee, why he asks her name, where she’s from, what brought her to his little corner of the wild west. 

She wonders if he can tell there’s a knife in her boot and a 38 nestled snugly into her lacy garters. She wonders, if even in his wildest dreams he’d ever imagine she knows how to use it.

He’s a good man, Sheriff Murdock, he does his best to keep the bandits and the riff raff out of town. He puts the fear of God into them and sends them running for the hills, so they say, and he’s kind to her, so kind that he looks at her like she’s never sinned a day in her life, like she never could.

They say there’s nothing Sheriff Murdock don’t know about, and they say it like it’s the stone cold truth.

They say he can hear the click of a pistol a mile away, that he can tip his head and catch the stench of trouble on the wind, they say he knows everything that goes down this side of the mountains - but Miss Karen knows that just can’t be true.

She’s got secrets of her own. Things she’ll never tell a soul, and when all it takes is a pretty smile to mask the big bad demons that lurk behind her eyes, she knows she can’t be the only one hiding something.

Sheriff Murdock is a good man and a good lawman, but he sees what he wants to see, and it makes him blind.

-

His Deputy is something else though. They call him Foggy - and he’s the purest man she ever did meet.

He’s kind to her too. He reminds her that even though the shadows might be full of devils, if she sticks to a path in the light she’s bound to come across a few angels too.

They’re good men, Nelson and Murdock, the Sheriff and his Deputy, and their record is outstanding, a shiny as the badges they wear upon their chests. Hell’s Canyon might be the end of the line, but they haven’t hanged a single man since Murdock became Sheriff.

That isn’t to say there hasn’t been anyone who might’ve deserved it.

They’ve caught crooks and killers, thieves and rapists, and in any other town, these men would’ve swung from the gallows, but not here in Hell’s Canyon, that’s just not how they do things.

They say it’s something to be admired, that Sheriff Murdock finds another way, but Miss Karen ain’t so sure. She knows what it’s like first hand when you give a bad man the choice to get back up again.

Tell him no, tell him to stop, cast him out, run away - you can try, and sometimes it works, but where evil lies in a man’s heart, it’s only a matter of time before he’s ready to bring the Devil back to your door.

And that’s the strange part of it all - they don’t seem to come back. Sure what with people coming off the train every day, thinking to make some kind of life here at the end of the line, there’s always new trouble springing up.

But when Sheriff Murdock has his say, with his words or his pistol - though he never aims to kill, they run for the hills and never look back.

They say he’s a hero cause he don’t need killing and hanging to keep peace in Hell’s Canyon.

But Miss Karen knows there’s more to it.

Evil comes back, any which way it can - she knows it, these bad men, they’ll try and try again.

Devils just don’t lay down and die - not unless someone kills ‘em.

-

She knows her way around now.

There’s a general store down main street, a bank, Doctor Temple’s office, the land claims, the blacksmith’s, the barbers - the Sheriff’s station, the paper, and Josie’s Saloon somewhere in between.

There’s a brothel on the north side, farthest from the rail station, a schoolhouse on the east with a spread of little houses, and the road to the mountains out west.

They say as soon as someone gets around to hauling a truckload of tnt out here, they’re gonna blast those mountains to bits and the line will keep on going out to the coast, but for now, this is where it ends.

There’s a church too, on the west side of town, it’s little black steeple poking up into the wide open sky. The chapel is old and wooden, like every other building in town and farther out there’s a little hill marked with rows of neat wooden crosses under a big white willow.

They tell her not to go that way, and it makes no difference to Miss Karen, she’s got no business out there.

She pays it no mind - not until they tell her why.

They say it’s haunted.

And when she asks, because she’s always been a little too curious (not like that’s never gotten her into trouble, oh no) - they tell her the story of a man who rose from his grave.

She asks her regulars first - the men who spend their evenings tossing down cards and booze, the ones that can be trusted to answer her true without getting suspicious. She flashes a smile and shakes her hips, she keeps the whiskey coming, and they don’t notice a thing.

There was a skirmish outside town - well over a year now, Lou tells her, scratching at his long white whiskers. A man and his wife, with two children in the wagon, were ambushed by bandits on the road out west, and when the dust and gunsmoke had cleared from the air, and the no good sons of bitches had hightailed it back to hell, the family - father, mother, daughter and son, had laid dead on the ground.

Lou shakes his head, and Gus calls for another round of whiskey. Sadder story you never did hear, he says - but that’s not the worst of it.

Miss Karen brings the bottle and pours out four shots until they insist she adds another. If she’s gonna listen to them tell tales of devils and ghosts, they tell her she’s gonna need it.

So she does, just this once - cause it makes her heart ache to think of something so awful. What could be worse than the lives of two children and their parents, cut short outta callous greed? Surely nothing, she thinks.

But when they tell her just what happened, it sends a chill right through her bones.

Four new plots were dug out by the willow, two big and two small, and somewhere between the reading of the prayers and the burial the next day, that’s when it’d gotten worse indeed.

Four bodies, washed and wrapped, in simple coffins were left under the willow that night. They were gonna bury ‘em at day break, Jimmy the Bear says, whole town was gonna come out to pay their respects.

But that just ain’t how it went.

There had only been three bodies when Pastor Lantom had come that morning - three bodies a mess of linen and a coffin in shambles.

Body snatchers, some had said - or maybe it was them bandits back for something they’d missed.

Lou tugs hard at his whiskers and lets out a long breath.

“People’ll tell themselves anything,” he says, “to keep from seeing what’s right in front of ‘em - no matter what kinda nightmare it may be.”

Plain and simple - the dead man had risen right up outta the box they’d built for him, roaring and thrashing like he was clawing his way outta hell. 

“And who could blame him,” Big John says, “they took his life, his wife, his family - he was coming back for vengeance.”

“Did he find it?” Miss Karen asks after they’ve downed their whiskey and Gus pulls the cards in front of him, shuffling them in his old gnarled hands.

Jimmy the Bear chuckles and leans back in his seat - “he did alright, and then some.”

“You ever wonder why the good for nothin’ scum that Sheriff Murdock sends outta here never finds its way back?” Big John asks her.

And she has - Miss Karen has indeed.

“They don’t find God up in them mountains,” Lou says, “they don’t wink outta existence either  
\- there’s a dead man waiting for them out there, waiting to beat the devil outta ‘em and punish them for their sins.”

-

There’s nothing saying old Lou ain’t full of shit.

The story is passed around town now and then - they still tell newcomers and pretty girls like her to keep clear of the road out west if they knows what’s good for ‘em. 

When the town gathers for church on Sundays, not a one of ‘em will stray farther than the chapel than they’ve got to.

A week later, she hears one of the boys who spit shine shoes outside the barber’s bet a whole stick of taffy that he can make it out to the white willow and back, a few days later she sees Miss McCoy go out to visit the grave of her mother, and a week after that she sees Mr Schoonover head out with a bundle of lilies under his arm.

Most people in town, they keep their distance.

It don’t seem to be much more than a story, but if Lou is telling her true, what he and them old crows think is truth anyway, then there’s more going on in this town than Miss Karen thought.

She knows she’s got no business poking around, not when the little people of Hell’s Canyon sleep easy in their beds every night believing their Sheriff is a hero but this wouldn’t be the first time she’s gone and stuck her nose some place where it don’t need sticking.

She’s got guts, Miss Karen Page, she’s got her wits and she’s got her 38 too - she’s stared evil in the eye and pulled the trigger so it’ll take more than a ghost story to get her shaking in her boots. 

It’s been three months now, since she stepped off the train to start her new life here at the end of the line. Three months and she hasn’t made too many friends - she’s made no enemies neither and that’s sayin something.

The Deputy, the Sheriff, Mr Ellison who she thinks must recognise a kindred spirit in her, she never did meet anyone more curious than a man who wrote a newspaper, and the Doctor too - them and a few others, she counts them her friends here.

She thinks of asking Doctor Temple - wonders what a no nonsense kind of woman like that might have to say about a dead man walking.

The Doctor is a hard woman with a hard to win smile, and Miss Karen thinks that’s probably the only way you can be, spending your time stitching up cowboys and gunslingers.

She’s stitched up Miss Karen once or twice, too.

-

It’s after one hell’ve a night at Josies.

Miss Karen has a gash on her arm and blood on her lip, and half a mind to move the 38 under her skirt to a holster on her hip.

Sheriff Murdock was there - and between making rounds with the whiskey and keeping the tables clear, she’d spent half the night up at the bar with him, blushing, and giggling and doing her damndest not to swoon every time he’d grinned at her.

She just don’t know what to think of him anymore. He’s still kind, he’s still charming and she sure don’t mind looking at him, but Miss Karen can’t help but think he just ain’t the hero they say he is.

It’s been awhile since she’s had the attention of a man so young and so handsome. He might look at her like she’s as pure as the virgin herself, but it makes a nice change from the men who look at her like they’re sorry there was an open spot at the bar, and she didn’t end up down at the brothel. 

Somewhere between pouring the Sheriff a second round, telling Mrs Carson to stay off the piano, and bringing matches over to a grim table of beardy prospectors so they could light up a box of the stinkiest cigars she’d ever had the misfortune to smell, the night had turned to chaos in a flash.

“It was a mess,” Miss Karen says, wincing as the Doctor peels back her bloodied sleeve.

“You say that like you expect better of Josie’s,” Doctor Temple says, handing Miss Karen a leather belt and telling her to bite down before she douses the wound on her arm.

It stings something awful and Miss Karen needs a breath or two before she’s ready to tell the Doctor what happened.

-

She didn’t know his name when he stumbled through the door, collapsing on the dusty floorboards with a wail, but there’d been something about him that was sure familiar.

She couldn’t say from when or where or why, but Miss Karen has been damn sure she’d seen him somewhere before. There was something about his face, as smeared and blood spattered as it was.

Mrs Carson had gasped loudly at the sight of him, her fingers coming to ungainly halt on the piano keys - the bottle of gin she’d been sipping out of, tipping off the end of the bench and smashing on the floor. 

The man had pushed himself up onto his elbows as a dead silence fell, and he’d looked around the room, eyes watery and panicked until they’d caught sight of Sheriff Murdock himself.

The Sheriff was on his feet quick as anything, crossing the floor to where the man lay and tugging him up by the scruff of his neck.

“You,” the Sheriff had spat, dragging the man to his feet.

When the man’s shaggy head had come into the light, the room damn near exploded with activity.

“Ain’t that Grote!” Someone shouted, and when another man had yelled “Sure is - I’d know that snake anywhere!” everyone had leapt to their feet, kicking back their chairs and reaching for their guns.

The Sheriff had held up his hand, a clear motion for the crowd to hold their horses. 

“I seem to recall driving your ass outta here only a month ago,” the Sheriff said in his most threatening tone, giving the man a little shake, “and when I did - I know for a fact I said nothing about you ever being welcome back.”

And Mr Grote sure wasn’t if the number of cocked pistols aiming straight for his head was anything to go by.

Miss Karen could remember the day Mr Grote had been charged with two murders. One of a man she did not know and the other, of an old lady who spent most of her time sitting out on her porch swing, knitting socks and telling the school kids stories about what it was like to come to America on a big old steamship.

“I know, I know,” Mr Grote whined, “but I had to.”

It was damn near unprecedented, Miss Karen knew - they all knew.

There might’ve been some dispute on exactly why, but once a man was caught, and tried and found guilty, and once Sheriff Murdock had sent him on his way, he never did come back.

They just never came back.

Not until now.

“You gotta help me,” the man had sputtered, grasping at Sheriff Murdock’s shirt with his grimy hands. “I can’t go out there, he’s gonna kill me.”

“You think we’re not?” Miss Karen heard someone shout, and she ducks half behind the bar, just in case they make good on their word.

“Who?” The Sheriff demanded, but Mr Grote hadn’t time to answer.

Before he could say another word, there’d been a blast of gunfire from out on the street that had so narrowly missed him, Miss Karen had seen him stain the front of his denims.

Sheriff Murdock had gone for his gun then, dropping the man to the floor and he had aimed his pistol right through the open door in the direction of the incoming shots, but he had not fired.

Everyone else had though.

As another pepper of shots had hit the floor around Mr Grote’s wriggling body, slicing so near his neck there were scorch marks on his faded collar, Miss Karen had hopped over the bar in a flurry of peach pink ruffles and lace.

She sure didn’t count this man as a friend, but she did count herself a good woman, and sometimes that meant helping a man in need - even a dirty rotten snake like Elliot Grote.

Miss Karen grabbed the man by his arm and dragged him to the exit out back.

She had looked over her shoulder then, as she had kicked open the door, and in the explosion of bottles, the gunsmoke, the streams of cards that filled the air as tables were overturned and men shouted and shoved to fire blindly into the night, she had seen Sheriff Murdock fire his pistol into the air, yelling over the din.

Mr Grote had been in no shape to walk, his legs had shaken like them of a brand new foal and he’d collapsed in flat stretch of dirt behind Josie’s crawling the rest of the way until they had sat, crouched low in the tall grass.

“Who’s coming after you?” Miss Karen had asked, speaking in nothing more than a hush.

“It’s the dead man,” Mr Grote blubbered, “the dead man did it.”

-

The little people of Hell’s Canyon just don’t know what to do with themselves, and they don’t seem to know what to do with Elliot Grote.

Some say they ought to send him back where he came from, let the Sheriff put the fear of God into him and send him right back outta town. Some say it’s about time somebody check to see if them gallows still work and some ain’t even that patient.

What they do know, is he’s a good for nothing killer and he ain’t welcome in Hell’s Canyon no more.

She hasn’t seen Sheriff Murdock in days.

She hasn’t poured him a cup of coffee in three, or a shot of whiskey in the week since the shootout at Josies.

They say he hasn’t left his office, that he spends his days glaring at Mr Grote through a set of iron bars.

Miss Karen ain’t sure what to do either, not when Mr Grote says he’s being hunted by a ghost - that there’s a dead man out to punish his sins.

She don’t know what’s truth and what’s lies but she knows it’s high time Hell’s Canyon had some answers, and she knows she’s the only one to find ‘em.

It takes her a day or two, but Miss Karen comes up with a good plan.

She’s gonna start with the graveyard - the graves of the family that was killed on the road out west, under the white willow and the place where the dead man rose to walk again.

Around the time when she usually clears the bar and heads up to bed, Miss Karen slips out the back door of Josie’s Tavern and makes her way towards the chapel.

She sees Mr Schoonover on the way out of town. His shop is up the west end of the street near the stables, where the road curves down to the chapel.

There’s a moment, when he looks at her, wiping his brow with a sooty rag, Miss Karen is all but sure he knows she’s up to something.

“Goodevenin’ Miss Page,” he says, with a respectful little nod.

“Goodevenin’,” she says and there’s a few beats of silence as he looks at her, suspicion crinkled in the corners of his eyes.

“Nice and clear tonight,” he nods at the wide open sky, navy black and full of stars.

“Good night for reflection, for thinking on things past, for remembering,” he adds.

Miss Karen nods. It’s not that she’s trying to be rude, but the longer she stands out here, the more likely someone’s gonna see her.

No one’ll much care about Mr Schoonover, even if he was walking right down to the willow himself. Every Friday without fail, he comes out to the cemetery, a bundle of lilies under his arm, but Miss Karen’s got no place out here. She’s got no grave to visit, no family, no friends buried under the willow and it’ll bring nothing but the wrong kind of attention if she’s caught out here.

Best to make nice, she thinks and send him on his way.

“Pastor Lantom left his bible on the bar,” she says, holding up the little black book in her hand and hoping he can’t see that it’s the one her mama gave her on her eighth birthday.

“I didn’t know Pastor Lantom was a patron of Ms Josie’s Saloon,” Mr Schoonover says with his brow raised.

“Oh he’s not,” she says - Miss Karen’s thought this through. “Mr Ewing thought his heart had gone and stopped again and he was hollering for the pastor to come and read him his last rights. By the time Pastor Lantom had come, Mr Ewing was in the outhouse hollering for a whole different reason, and I served the good Pastor a cup of coffee for his trouble.

Well then, Mr Schoonover says, and she can see he’s just disgusted enough to keep from asking any more questions.

Miss Karen saves herself a little smile - this ain’t her first rodeo.

Well then, he repeats, a good night to you Miss Page.

To you too, she says sweetly. And if you see Mr Anstruther, remind him to take his mare in - he told me three times tonight Juniper needs a new set, and after all that whiskey I’d be surprised if he even remembers he owns a horse. Don’t want her going lame on my account.

Will do, Miss Page, he says and tips his hat.

-

After that, it’s as simple as anything to steal off into the night and take the road down to the chapel.

She circles round to the side door so she’s just outta sight of anyone who might be peeping out their curtains back in town, and Miss Karen waits a few minutes, looking out at the big white willow glowing in the moonlight.

It’s a good night for it, the half moon is just bright enough that she can see her way down the path that leads to the little graveyard on the hill, but there are plenty of shadows to get lost in as well.

On first sight, it’s plain that no one’s been tending the yard, that no one cares to come out here anymore. She wanders through the rows, reading the names lettered on the wooden crosses in fading paint - McCoy, Baxter, Boyle, Carson, names she’s heard around town.

The grass grows free and unkempt, overgrown with thistles and wildflowers, curling and wrapping around each grave marker as though the ground is opening it’s arms and returning this sad little place into the plain patch of land it used to be.

There’s one spot though, Miss Karen sees, at the edge of the yard - three crosses in a row, and right next to them a depression in the grass where the earth has sunk down and grown over a fourth grave that was never filled.

There’s a little flutter of nerves in her belly as she lays eyes on the three wooden crosses, a sinking of truth in her gut to know at least some of what old Lou had told her hadn’t been a load of hogwash.

These plots, they’ve been tended, and recently too. The grass is short and neat here, cared for as though someone’s been coming regularly and she’s damn sure she knows just who that might be.

It’s the same name on the crosses - Castle, Castle, Castle, and her heart breaks for them, aches for the man that lost them, who comes to visit his family on a lonely hill under a big white willow instead of coming home every night to see their shining faces.

There’s some truth to old Lou’s story, that’s for sure.

And just how it fits in with the rest of the town, Sheriff Murdock and the particular brand of law he carries out here in Hell’s Canyon, she don’t know.

They say there’s a ghost - that he’s a dead man, but Miss Karen’s seen enough to know one thing. Dead men don’t feel, they don’t hurt, they don’t care - so if there’s a man out there, she knows he ain’t a ghost, he’s broken maybe but he’s not dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song: the stable song - gregory alan isakov
> 
> come down come down sweet reverence,  
> unto my simple house and ring...
> 
> ring like silver, ring like gold  
> ring out those ghosts

Miss Karen sits a while, in the grass by the three lonely crosses.

The wind has picked up, pulling little tendrils of golden hair around her face to tickle her nose and cheeks.

It’s getting cooler now, and she pulls her shawl tight around her shoulders before she stands, saying a prayer for the family that lays at her feet.

Her moment of sorrow is cut short though, the weight of sadness in her chest turning to something hot and prickly nipping at the back of her neck.

There’s a noise - a movement of something out by the willow, and she hears it clear as anything through the sound of the wind rustling the grass.

Something’s out there - something’s watching her.

Miss Karen keeps herself still - eyes wide, searching the shadows for the something, or someone who’s caught her out here in a place she’s got no right to be.

Could just be a coyote, she thinks - she hopes, but just in case, she lays a hand on her skirt, ready to pull her gun from the place where it’s hidden.

Whatever happens, that 38 on her thigh is the best insurance a girl could ask for.

After a moment or two of silence, cut by nothing but the wind and the far off hoot of a barn owl setting out for the hunt, she lets out a steady breath and backs away.

She keeps her eyes trained on the willow, the place where she thought she just might’ve seen something shift in the shadows and her heart leaps into her throat - nearly comes to a clear stop when she sees a big dark shape move out from behind the willow’s thick trunk.

It’s a man, dressed in black from head to toe, with a stetson pulled down low over his eyes.

Miss Karen don’t need to see his face to know his name - not that she’d recognize him even if she did.

“Mr Castle,” she tries gently.

“Depends on who’s asking,” he says - and his voice is nothing but a low rasp, like it’s well outta practice.

He doesn’t move - and with his face shadowed and hidden she can’t see if he’s even looking at her. She knows he is though, she can feel his eyes on her, boring right through her, making the little hairs stand on the back of her neck and goose pimples raise over the pale skin on her arms. 

“I was just…” she starts, hating the way her words stumble and falter. “My name is Karen Page, I live here in town and I -”

“The fuck are you doing here?” He snarls, and though he’s still as the graves at her feet there’s a bite to his words - like he’s trying to scare her off. 

And maybe she she should be scared, if he’s half of what they say he is - a ghost or a killer, either way, that’s something she knows she ought be running from.

There’s a little twitch of movement, the drum of the fingers on his right hand as though he’s thinking of reaching for his gun, and she backs away, stumbling over a patch of thistles and nearly falling in the shaggy grass.

“Paying my respects,” Miss Karen says, grasping onto the truth and throwing it up like a shield in the face of his anger.

She can hardly see him, nothing but the faintest tilt of his head as he looks from her pale face and wide eyes to the graves of his family.

Mr Castle doesn’t say a word but he goes on staring right through her and Miss Karen pulls herself to her feet, ignoring the mess of grass and brambles clinging to her skirt in favour of keeping her hands up, palms open in front of her.

She takes a step backwards, careful not to tread on the graves.

“I’ll go,” she says into the silence.

Mr Castle doesn’t move as she backs away a few more steps.

“No.”

Miss Karen stops short.

“You stay,” he says roughly, his voice just as harsh but this time he seems to catch himself, sees the way she’s looking at him like she’s seen a ghost, so he adds, “please?”

Her mouth opens and closes again, and she settles for a slow nod. 

Mr Castle seems satisfied with that, and why he might want her here, she can’t imagine but she tries for a steadying breath, and lowers her hands slowly to brush off her skirts.

“It’s not right - what happened to your family,” she offers, nodding to the row of crosses between them.

He tips his head to the side, and she hears the hiss of his breath as though her words have stung sharp.

“Just what is it you think happened?”

“They told me back in town - I heard,” Miss Karen starts, but he cuts her off.

“What you heard ain’t shit,” he says, and there’s a hardness to his tone that almost makes her regret saying anything at all.

“Maybe so,” she presses, “it wouldn’t be the first time truth and lies got a little mixed up.”

He laughs at that, in a way she knows he don’t find her words funny at all.

“This one’s so full of lies it could fill that empty hole in the ground.”

“Tell me the truth then,” she says looking hard into the dark searching for his eyes. 

When he tilts his chin, the moonlight catches the angles of his face and Miss Karen can see a black eye, a bloody lip, and a day old slice across his cheek that’s just starting to heal.

“You didn’t come out here to listen to a dead man tell tales.”

Miss Karen shakes her head.

“No, but I came.”

He says nothing for a while and she wonders if he’s gonna speak or if he’ll let her slip off back the way she’s come.

But for whatever reason - and she don’t want to think too hard on how or why, that seems to be good enough for him and he starts to talk.

-

The truth, she finds, hurts a hell’ve a lot more than any pack of lies ever could.

Mr Castle had started slowly, taking her back over a year ago when he had sent his family on ahead of him by rail. He’d had a few things to wrap up back in New York City, but when he was done, he was gonna meet ‘em out here in Hell’s Canyon and that’s where they were gonna make a fresh start.

She’s heard that one before - more and more people these days, going west to seek their fortune and she’s guilty of it herself.

They’d met him off the train, his boy, his baby girl, thrilled as anything to see him after so long, and they’d taken him down to see their mama waiting in a little covered wagon at the station.

There was a surprise coming, they told him and so he’d hopped up next to Maria and let her lead the pony through town and out towards the hills. She’d pulled the reins somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and they’d all jumped down, the kids dragging on his arms until he stood in the centre of a big plot of land, little creek to one side and the best damn view of the mountains he ever did see on the other.

It was gonna be their land, they told him - town had it up for sale, and this was where they were gonna build their house and make their dreams come true. 

His baby girl, she’d ran back to the wagon and got a shovel - they were gonna start right then and there. She’d dug a little hole right where the house was gonna be and she’d taken a penny from her pocket holding it out flat on her palm so he could read the year stamped into the shiny copper.

So they’d know when the house was built, she’d said - so that even when the wood was rotted away, and their bones had turned to dust in the yard, there would always be a little something that said this is where they lived.

He’d dug in his pocket then and found three more coins another penny and two dimes, so that he, and Maria, his boy and his baby girl could all drop one into the dirt.

That was gonna be their place - and they would leave a piece of themselves there forever.

Miss Karen had swallowed away the lump in her throat, feeling the pinprick of tears work their way into the corners of her eyes.

Mr Castle’s voice had shaken, growing deeper and more gravelly as he’d pressed on and even from a distance she could see the wetness in his eyes.

How absurd was it, she had thought, to be standing in a graveyard, crying with a man she’d never met, but there she was.

He’d never come out from the cover of the willow, never taken a step closer to her, and the whole while he’d talked, his gravelly voice raw and thick in his throat, she had ached to go to him, to take his hand, to do anything to make him feel like it weren’t just him alone in the world.

But Miss Karen stayed put, her feet planted firm in the grass - it weren’t her place no matter how her heart had broke for him. 

There’d been someone watching them, he’d said - watched ‘em dig their hole, drop their coins, and lay down a big old blanket so that he and Maria could sit tight and drink from a flask of hot coffee, and let the kids run around the grass, planning out where each room was gonna go.

And whoever had been watching, whoever had known they were coming back to build a house out there on that land was set to do anything to stop it.

Mr Castle had gone on from there, only this time it was much the same as what she’d heard from old Lou.

The only thing that’d changed was why - it hadn’t been a robbery or a heist, it had been stone cold insurance that whatever was out there, on the plot of land his family had intended to make their home, was left undisturbed.

-

Miss Karen pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders, hugging it against her arms and her legs feel weak as though another gust of wind might blow her over.

“You must’ve loved ‘em something mighty,” she says and she’s surprised at the steadiness in her voice.

He’s silent for a beat or two and when he speaks again his words are raw and broken.

“More’n anything.”

Miss Karen smiles at him, and she tries her best for soft and genuine, to let him know without words that she was listening, that for once, there was someone out here to share his pain.

He seems to sense she’s ready to go, and before she does, he plucks the hat from his head so he can meet her eye to eye, moonlight cast harshly across his face.

If he weren’t so beat up, she thinks, if he didn’t look quite like he’d been hit by a train and trampled by a herd of bison, he could almost be handsome.

With his stetson pressed over his heart, Mr Castle nods his head.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says.

“For what?”

“For helping me remember,” he says and his voice is thick and gravelly again. “No one comes out here no more, no one even knows they’re here - they deserve better’n that, they deserve to be remembered.”

And they do, they do.

-

They hold a town hall, and everyone comes.

Even Mr Grote, who they say put up a mighty big stink when Sheriff Murdock had opened up his cell and marched him through the centre of town, and he’d nearly gone and wet his denims again when he’d seen where they were taking him.

They may not use the gallows anymore for hanging, but it’s hell’ve a lot more reliable than an upturned box of soap flakes for anyone who needs speaking to a crowd.

Miss Karen finds a good spot in the shade of a big elm where she can watch the goings on, well outta the centre of the rabble.

She watches Mr Foggy take the stage, pulling on a length of rope tied around Mr Grote’s wrists, and Sheriff Murdock comes after, giving the man a prod up the steps.

They centre him in front of the crowd, but they don’t pull a sack over his head, or throw a rope around his neck, even though she can hear a few voices calling to see him hanged.

“We came here today,” the Sheriff starts before stopping short to dodge a rotten apple thrown squarely at Mr Grote’s head, “to decide the fate of this here man.”

The crowd starts up again and Miss Karen can hear a few people yell ‘hang him’ and another yell ‘just shoot him - he ain’t worth the time’.

Sheriff Murdock waits ‘em out, patient and steady as anything and when they’re done, he clears his throat.

“It is unbecoming of us to get bloodthirsty. Even though I think we can all agree, Mr Grote has done wrong, it is not up to us to say whether he lives or he dies.”

This don’t sit well with the crowd but the Sheriff keeps right on going.

“It is up to us to be better than that - to show that we’re better than the likes of Mr Grote and the company he keeps. We may not have the power to make him change but we do have the power of forgiveness.”

Miss Karen is all for forgiveness, she knows damn well that a person with a kind heart and a good soul can sin and hurt and do wrong, but she also knows Sheriff Murdock is walking a fine line against the public mood.

She won’t say they’re right - that Mr Grote deserves hanging, but if the Sheriff don’t start talking words they want to hear he’s gonna have an angry mob on his hands.

The crowd starts to murmur, and Mr Foggy takes a step forward to lay a hand on the Sheriff’s arm as if to keep him on track.

“So,” the Sheriff says, "I’ll invite you now, one by one to have your say - all those who wanna speak, raise your hand.”

Mr Grote is the first person with his hands in the air, awkwardly held in front of them on the end of Mr Foggy’s rope and in the spirit of fairness, Sheriff Murdock lets him speak.

“I know what I did ain’t right,” Mr Grote says, and Miss Karen can see his eyes have gone all watery again as he pleads with the crowd. “That old lady, she just got in the way -“

Another rotten apple goes sailing over their heads towards Mr Grote and the Sheriff reaches out quick as a flash and catches the damn thing, tossing it to the ground.

“I’d suggest, Mr Grote” the Deputy says, shaking his head, “you best not talk about Missus Jeffries like that. Make your point and move on.”

“What I’m saying is - I ain’t gonna do it again,” Mr Grote says.

“Horseshit,” Mr Fuller yells, “we all know you done shot Missus Jeffries cause she got in the way of you killing Slinky Tom Dalton, which you went and did anyway.”

The crowd boos and hollers, shaking their fists in the air.

“Look, I don’t damn care if you forgive me or not,” Mr Grote yells back at them, “just whatever you do, don’t send me back out there.”

“I think what Mr Grote is trying to say, is that he would prefer to be locked up here in town rather than we send him back the way he came,” Sheriff Murdock says evenly. "The perpetrators who shot up Josie’s last week are still at large -“

“No,” Mr Grote says, shaking his shaggy head. “Ain’t no perpetrators, it was one man, same as shot up Wayne Cooper’s camp, and killed Alonzo, and Blue Ricky and Virgil Wicket.”

And ain’t that news - not just to the people of Hell’s Canyon, who start murmuring amongst themselves but it looks to Miss Karen like it’s some kind of slap in the face for the Sheriff to hear these names again.

Miss Karen can’t imagine what must be going through his head but she can tell from the look in his eye, it had never occurred to him that these men had left town only to hide out in the hills.

She hasn’t been in town long enough to know the names of these men or the crimes they committed, but the people around her do, and she hears them trade their stories, each more awful than the last.

Wayne Cooper who robbed the bank, took Mr Brody and Miss Jenkins hostage six hours before shooting ‘em both in the heart.

Alonzo Harding who was caught driving a wagon with three pretty little Indian girls gagged and tied up in the back.

Blue Ricky who beat his own Grandpa to death over a handful of gold.

And Virgil Wickett who took Miss Carol-Ann Cole out into the woods one night and never brought her home.

“Shot ‘em dead?” Miss Reeves asks and when Mr Grote nods, the crowd erupts again, shouting things like ‘good’ and ‘about time’ and ‘finally someone had the guts to do it’.

The Sheriff’s face has grown pale and he swallows hard.

“Can you hear yourselves?” He shouts through the din. “This ain’t something to be celebrating, four men are dead and the man that did it is on the loose.”

“They got what was coming to ‘em,” Missus Boyle yells back, “a whole lot later than deserved if you ask me.”

The Sheriff hangs his head, like what he’s hearing is disappointing him down to his very bones, but he rights himself again, sets his jaw and shows his grit.

“I have never tolerated killing of any kind in Hell’s Canyon - and I won’t start now. I ain’t gonna have men hunting down other men in my streets, no matter who they are or what they’ve done.”

“So what’re you gonna do about it?” Jimmy the Bear asks, and there’s a resounding chorus of ‘yeah’, ‘yeah’ and ‘what are you gonna do?’.

“First we’re gonna start by finding him,” the Sheriff says, and Miss Karen don’t know why but she feels her heart sink into her belly like a stone dropping to the bottom of a well.

-

Five days after her first trip out to the willow, with three blackeyed susans and a flask of hot coffee, Miss Karen goes back to the graveyard.

This time, she's pretty sure no one sees her go.

Mr Schoonover's shop is closed up for the night - it's quiet down this end of town and there's a small part of her that's sorry she don't get to use the clever little story she came up with just in case.

It's only after she's laid a daisy on each one of the Castle's graves that she sees him come out of the shadows by the willow.

She lets him watch her say a prayer and then she turns to him, holding out the flask in her hand.

“Brought this for you,” she says and he just looks at her, first at her outstretched hand and then her face.

He says nothing.

“It's getting colder”' she tries again, “winter's on the way.”

And she’s right, the trees around town have turned golden and ochre and a few have begun to shed their leaves. It's only a matter of time before the first snow comes.

She don't expect him to say much, even though the last time they met he told her things she knows ain't seen the light of day in months.

“It's coffee,” she tries one more time, and when she's just thinking of leaving the flask right there on the grass at her feet, that's when he steps forward.

“Never heard of a ghost who drank coffee,” he says and his voice is just as low as she remembers, hard and gravelly like he don't get around to using it much more.

Then again, maybe that's how it's always been.

He comes close enough to take the flask from her, and she gets a good look at his face this time - the cut on his cheek is healing up but there’s a fresh bruise on his jaw. Still, she can say for sure there's a handsome man hidden somewhere under there.

He's not like the Sheriff, not easy on the eyes or what any good girl would write home about, but there's something striking about the angles of his face, hard and deep set as it is.

Not that it's time to be thinking any such thing, but Miss Karen, she notices.

She notices the way he's looking at her too, boring into her with those eyes so dark they're almost black and the intensity of it makes her want to blush.

She don't though - but she does shiver, and she pulls her shawl around her pretending like it's the cold and not the way he's looking at her.

“You ain’t no ghost,” she says firmly, as if he needs reminding of the fact.

There’s a beat of silence as Mr Castle glares at her, his jaw set, and she stares right back, unflinching.

“You sure about that?”

Miss Karen stands a moment with him and watches him unscrew the flask and take a long drink of the coffee she made him.

She watches the way his throat moves as he swallows, the way his bruised knuckles flex around the pewter flask in his hand.

She wonders if he always looks like this - a little beat up, a little bloody, a little like he's gone a few rounds with a bear and won - she can't imagine life out here is easy, tracking down the outcasts of Hell's Canyon and punishing 'em for the things they done wrong.

Mr Castle wipes his mouth neatly with the back of his hand and closes the flask. 

“Why'd you come out here?” He asks and he's staring at her again, searching her face for lies.

“Everyone deserves a little kindness now and then,” Miss Karen says, shrugging.

“Even me?” He asks like he's asking if she knows what he does out here and daring her to pass her judgement.

“Even you,” she nods.

And just like the first night, he tips his hat to her.

“Thank you, ma'am,” he says and she feels a chill run right through her that ain’t cause of no autumn wind.

He turns away then, and she watches him walk back into the shadows, worrying her lip and wondering if what she’s about to do is the right thing.

“They’re coming for you,” Miss Karen calls after him and she sees him pause.

He don’t turn around, but his voices cuts clear through the dark.

“Let ‘em come.”

-


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song: should've been a cowboy - toby keith
> 
> i bet you've never heard ole marshall dillion say  
> miss kitty have you ever thought of running away  
> settling down will you marry me  
> if i asked you twice and begged you pretty please

She thinks about Mr Castle on and off for the rest of the week.

She still pours hot coffee in the morning and whiskey shots at night, but when the rest of Hell’s Canyon is fixed on Mr Grote and his shocking revelation and doing their best to keep on keepin’ on here at the end of the line, Miss Karen is thinking about a dead man who ain’t so dead.

That afternoon, Mr Ellison comes into Josie’s and takes a stool, propping his elbows up onto the bartop and he rests his chin on his folded hands.

He don’t usually come in here, and Miss Karen knows it’s cause he thinks himself too good for Josie’s, not that there’s a classier establishment in town.

She nods to him, pours a coffee and slides it across the bar.

“So what d’you reckon?” Mr Ellison asks her, looking at her with narrowed eyes.

It ain’t unfriendly but it’s like he’s sizing her up, like he’s thinking of prying the secrets outta her brain with a toothpick.

“Bout what?”

Mr Ellison smiles.

“Mr Grote,” he says simply.

“Why’re you asking me?” Miss Karen says, keeping her face plain.

Mr Ellison fixes her with a look that says he’s well practised in the art of shovelling through horseshit.

“Now, now,” he says, holding her gaze, “we both know there’s a hell’ve a lot more to you than that pretty face. And I don’t want to be begin to guess even half of what you’ve got hidden up there, but I do know you ain’t the kind of person who don’t notice when there’s something going on.”

Miss Karen thinks this is just about the nicest thing anyone ever did say about her, and she can’t help but give him a little smile of appreciation.

Even so, she ain’t gonna spill the beans just like that.

“How about this,” Mr Ellison offers, when she picks up a rag and makes busy at the other end of the bar. “How about I tell you what I know, and then you tell me.”

It’s a fair enough trade, and so after Miss Karen takes a tray of coffee over to a table of grisly old gunslingers in the corner, she comes back to the bar.

“Alright, Mr Ellison?” She says, and he tells her.

Back before the Sheriff had become sheriff and the Deputy had become deputy and they were just a couple of cowboys called Nelson and Murdock, the law in Hell's Canyon had been set by a man called Mr Fisk.

Only thing was, his way of doing things was about as different from Murdock's as a punch to the gut is to a kiss on the cheek.

He'd bought up most of the town, kept the people of Hell's Canyon squashed right under his fat old thumb and anyone who stepped a toe outta line, he'd sent straight to the gallows.

Mr Fisk's men - the ones that kept an eye around town and reported back to the big boss man, they were allowed to do as they saw fit, taking whatever they liked and hurting whoever they pleased.

It weren't no way to live and Matthew Murdock had known it - known it was wrong and he'd taken it upon himself to end it.

He'd put an end to Mr Fisk too, and when Murdock had brought peace back to Hell's Canyon and the people had named him sheriff, he vowed that his kind of law would be different.

And it was, Mr Ellison told her.

Anytime the Sheriff and his Deputy had caught some no good sonofabitch that needed catching, they'd bring 'em down to the sheriff's station and lock 'em up.

Murdock himself would give a long hard talk about sinning, read to 'em from the bible and charge them with their crimes. And in the morning, they'd strip the good for nothing scum down to their drawers, confiscate their guns and their knives. They'd tie their hands behind their backs and rope up their ankles and ride 'em outta town.

No matter who they were, or what they’d done - Sheriff Murdock didn’t believe in killing them, that hanging ‘em would make him no better than a killer himself.

And up until that moment when Mr Grote had stumbled into Josie’s Saloon with a gunman hot on his trail, the people of Hell’s Canyon had been happy to believe that all it took was a few strong words and a ride out to the middle of nowhere to keep them safe in their beds every night.

And then Mr Grote had brought the truth down on them, run down outta the mountains yelling about wolves circling the flock and suddenly the good Sheriff’s way just weren’t good enough anymore.

“Or what he thinks is the truth,” Mr Ellison says taking a sip of his coffee.

He sounds mighty skeptical to Miss Karen, but she thinks it’s just a ruse, a little prod to get her to start talking.

“I wouldn’t know anything about Mr Grote other than what I saw same as everyone else in town,” Miss Karen says. “Ain’t been here long enough.”

Mr Ellison whistles and leans back on his stool, but everything about the set if his face says he’s more than up to her challenge.

“That’s right,” Mr Ellison says nodding, “But that ain’t what I’m asking. You might not’ve been around long enough to know Mr Grote, but you sure ain’t been here long enough to know any of them souls that lay out by the willow either. Unless you’ve got a vase of blackeyed susans sitting pretty upstairs on your dresser, then I’d say there might be a thing or two you do know.”

She likes Mr Ellison, but she don’t trust him - Miss Karen knows better than to trust anyone too easy anymore.

She tells him about old Lou and the ghost story, tells him she went out to the willow to see for herself the place they say the dead man came to life.

She tells him she laid the flowers out on the graves of the family that was killed, that she said a prayer for them and came home.

She tells him the truth, but she don’t tell him the whole story.

“That’s a pretty story, Miss Page,” says Mr Ellison, laughing to himself. “Only, the Sheriff’s got a problem on his hands now. People sure don’t like the idea of bandits hiding out in the hills, and Sheriff Murdock ain’t happy there’s a man out there taking the law into his own hands, even if the town think he’s doing us a favour.”

“Still don’t know what you need me for,” Miss Karen says and makes to fill his cup but Mr Ellison shakes his head.

He stands and dusts down the seat of his trousers and picks up his hat.

“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine,” Mr Ellison says with a chuckle, “you don’t look like the type to go chasing after ghosts, which makes me think that there ain’t no ghost out there after all.”

“And what of it?”

“When you’ve been writing the town paper for as long as I have, you start to get pretty good at putting two and two together,” he says. “I see a ghost story that ain’t got no ghost, another about a dead man who lost everything, I heard Mr Grote tell of crooks and killers hiding out in the hills and a man ain’t got no problem hunting ‘em down.”

Mr Ellison plonks his hat down onto his head and smiles.

“Sheriff says he’s got a killer to find, and I say I know his name.”

Miss Karen had blinked back at him, done her best to show nothing of the way her heart had begun to rap hard against her ribs and hadn’t been til Mr Ellison was long gone, that she’d let out a long shaky breath.

-

The next morning, when Miss Karen is washed, dressed and feeling like she’s well in need of a coffee herself, she comes down the stairs to find Ms Josie still sweeping up splintered wood and bits of broken glass.

“Twice in the same week,” the woman says with a shake of her head, swiping a lock of greying hair from her eyes. “I tell you, if I have to threaten to get out my shotgun again, I’m gonna have it mounted above the bar just so everyone knows it’s there without my having to tell ‘em.”

“Wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Miss Karen laughs, coming over to help Ms Josie right the chairs and shift the tables back into place.

Ms Josie finishes with the broom and goes to the bar, leaning so heavily that her more than ample bosoms rest on the polished wood. She looks as tired as Miss Karen feels, and after last night, who could blame her. 

Most evenings at Josie’s Saloon go by with nothing more than Mrs Carson wailing away at the piano about ol' Marshall Dillon before someone has the sense to take away her bottle of gin, but some, like the night previous, get more than a little rowdy.

“There’s something in the air,” Ms Josie says as Miss Karen makes to get the coffee going. “Ever since Mr Grote slithered his way back into town, people been uneasy.”

Miss Karen agrees - she can feel it too, the way there’s something blowing about town and putting everyone on edge.

It had all started with a game of poker, and there’d been nothing strange about that - even when them grim looking prospectors, puffing thick clouds of smoke out from underneath their hats, had invited Mr Ewing and Mr Childers over for a game.

Miss Karen had thought about warning them - telling them that once Mr Ewing got going with his whiskey, he could talk tall tales til he was blue in the face, but them boys seemed like such a sour bunch. She’d done as they’d asked, even though she’d sorely regretted bringing over the matches once they’d lit those awful cigars, and she’d kept their shots coming - but they’d been short with her, downright rude, shooing her away when she’d asked how much longer they were staying in town.

An hour in and Mr Childers had left the table, not because he was out of betting money, but because it looked to Miss Karen he didn’t much like those boys neither. Mr Ewing hung on a while though, and for once he seemed to be keeping his tongue to himself.

Miss Karen had been busy, tending to her tables, looking after Lou and Jimmy the Bear, and bringing Miss Freel watered down gin in dainty little glasses just as she’d asked so she didn’t get too drunk and spoil her big night with Art Lancey.

And then outta nowhere, Mr Ewing had been shouting, lunging across the table and poking a thick finger into the chest of the man across from him.

“Don’t pretend like you ain’t him,” Mr Ewing had yelled, “I know you - and I know your face, even under them whiskers.”

The man had laughed at him, stared right back into his eyes and reached around Mr Ewing to pick up his cigar.

“Your eyesight is going, old man,” he’d said, taking a long puff of smoke and blowing it right into Mr Ewing’s face.

Maybe back in his day, Miss Karen had thought, before Mr Ewing had gone to seed and his belly had yet to slip somewhere south of his belt, he might’ve been able to take on a man like that, but certainly not anymore - and certainly not all five of ‘em at once.

The man, the grim beardy one with the cigar, he’d cocked his head this way and that, meeting eyes with each of the boys at his table, and when he’d given a little nod of his head, they’d had Mr Ewing flat on his back on the table top, one man for each of his limbs. When he’d pulled the knife, pressing it right up to Mr Ewing’s throat, that’s when Jimmy the Bear had called out, and for the second time that week, chairs were knocked back and tables overturned as half the bar had got to their feet.

The boys had let go of Mr Ewing long enough to grab their guns, but there hadn’t been time for shooting. Mr Lancey had lept on one of the men, and then Mr Anthruther had followed, and then there’d been a big old dogpile right there on the table, with Mr Ewing wailing somewhere at the bottom.

Miss Karen hadn’t wasted any time going for the gun on her hip, ducking behind the bar and slipping it out of her garters - she’d been ready to shoot and she would’ve done if anyone of them boys had given her reason to. In a matter of minutes the Sheriff had arrived, with Mr Foggy at his side and they’d broken up the fight, which had somehow turned from pulling a gang of prospectors off Mr Ewing into a full on brawl.

Josie’s Saloon itself had taken the brunt of the damage, beyond a few bloody noses and some cracked ribs - and though everyone involved had a hell’ve a lot to say about what had happened, no one seemed to be able to tell the Sheriff who the boys had been or where they might’ve run off to when they’d seen Sheriff Murdock coming.

When the coffee is ready, Miss Karen pours herself a cup and one for Ms Josie too.

It ain’t that early, but it sure is quiet, and Miss Karen says a little prayer to herself that the rest of the day will carry on just like this.

“Soon as you’re done, I got a job for you, sugar” Ms Josie says, nodding towards the back door, and Miss Karen follows her eye. “Mr Fuller came by with a case of whiskey fresh off the train, only he didn’t open the damn thing and it’s been sitting out back since he brought it last night. I need you to run over to Schoonover’s and ask for a prybar, or if he’s feeling generous, bring the man himself and have him open it up for you.”

“Sure thing, Ms Josie,” Miss Karen nods.

“And when you do, make sure you take along a bottle to Miss Claire like she’s been asking.”

Miss Karen smiles at that - it's a peculiar thing to hear Ms Josie call the Doctor by her given name, but she knows her boss has been in Hell's Canyon long enough to know half of it’s residents from babes.

“I will,” she says and when Miss Josie looks at her expectantly, her brows raised into the frazzled ends of her greying hair, Miss Karen puts down her cup.

It ain’t empty, but it looks like she’s done.

-

She takes the broom with her on the way out, sweeping glass and splinters and dust neatly out the back door.

The case of whiskey is there, resting next to an old barrel and a couple of broken chair legs, and Miss Karen looks at it for a moment, her eyes catching on something she can’t quite place. It’s just a normal old crate, slatted wood nailed together at each corner with bits of straw poking out from under the lid - the lid which is definitely not nailed down.

Maybe Ms Josie was mistaken - it had been a rough night after all.

It’d even be conceivable what with the kerfuffle in the bar, someone could’ve found it out here and opened up the lid to help themselves - neither she nor Ms Josie would’ve noticed if there’d been a pack of coyotes out back, howling at the moon.

Miss Karen crouches next to the crate and pulls back the top to count the bottles inside, digging through the straw and finding eight even - or was that nine?

One of them bottles is no bottle at all - it’s her pewter flask, the one she ain’t seen since the night she handed it over to Mr Castle.

It’s been polished, she notes, and what’s more, when she unscrews the lid, she finds it’s been washed too.

Well ain’t that polite of him, she thinks before she catches herself.

Sure it was polite of him, to wash it, return it and hide it out here in a box neither she nor Ms Josie had any hope of opening on their own, but that also meant he’d been here, in town, right outside her back door.

Miss Karen rights herself, dusting off her dress and turning around to look behind her as though he might still be there, watching. She knows he ain’t though - not because she don’t doubt a man like that could stay well hidden if he wanted to, but because if he were there, and if he were looking at her, she knows she’d feel it.

She’s not expecting to find him - not that there are many places to hide, but she looks anyway, combing her eyes through the tall dry grass and seeing nothing more than a couple of crows. They swoop low and land just out of sight, and another rises up outta the grass from the same place and flies right toward her, settling on the railing of the balcony above her head.

She tucks her flask down the front of her dress, so that it sits snugly under her arm pressing up against her breast.

She looks back, over her shoulder, scanning the field of yellow grass that stretches out behind Josie’s Saloon. Far off in the distance, she can just see the railway station - the very same train that had brought the whiskey being readied to turn and go back the way it came.

There’s a little pit pat pat on the dirt next to her, and Miss Karen looks down, first at the dark stain in the dust, and then up at the crow resting on the balcony, a torn strip of flesh in it’s beak.

Miss Karen nearly drops the bottle of whiskey.

There’s a great many things that crow could be eating, but she knows - just as sure as she knows Mr Castle ain’t out there watching her, that she’s gonna find something else hidden in the grass.

There’s a lot of reasons why she should stay put, why she should go inside and call for Ms Josie, or the Sheriff or anyone else at all, but Miss Karen Page has never really been a staying put kind of girl.

It takes a second before her feet start moving, seems they have more sense than the rest of her, but with a few steps, Miss Karen crosses the dusty flat and wades into the tall dry grass.

With a few steps more, her eyes fix upon the body of a man, beaten, bloody, full of holes and half pecked at by crows.

-


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song: lay down lay low - the steel wheels
> 
> don't believe everything you hear about angels drawing near  
> i hold onto a ghost that knows my name

Seems Miss Karen just hadn’t said her prayers loud enough.

 

There’d been nothing quiet about the rest of the day, and as if finding one body hadn’t been enough, after they’d called Sheriff Murdock, and he and Mr Foggy had come with Pastor Lantom, and two men carrying a wooden board to haul the dead man away, they’d found another a ways farther out in the field.

 

The Sheriff had told her to go on inside, and Miss Karen had gone along with Ms Josie who’d sat her down at the bar and poured her a shot of gin, demanding she drink it down quick to settle her nerves.

 

“Atta girl, sugar,” Ms Josie said, taking a shot of gin for herself right out of the bottle.

 

Mr Foggy had gone with them, taking a stool next to Miss Karen and placing a gentle hand on her back as though he thought she might topple right off the back of her seat.

 

She was shaken, to be sure, but she’d steeled herself, sitting up tall on her stool and looked the Deputy straight in the eye.

 

He’d asked her what happened and she told him - about taking the broom out back, the open crate of whiskey and the crow that had lead her to find the dead man.

 

What she didn’t say, was that the flask she’d leant to Mr Castle had been waiting for her, hidden amongst the bottles.

 

When Sheriff Murdock comes in a few minutes later, there’s a cross sort of hook in his brow and a frown on his face.

 

“I hate to do this to you, Miss Page, god knows a pretty girl like you should have no business looking a dead man in the eye,” he says kindly, “but I’ve gotta ask - did you happen to recognise that man out there?”

 

Miss Karen is about to shake her head when the dead man’s mangled face flashes before her eyes. The thought of it is enough to make her belly churn in disgust, but she nods her head.

 

“I don’t know his name,” she says, thinking back to the night before, when she’s seen the man’s face whole and unbeaten, glaring up at her through a cloud of foul grey smoke. “But I’m sure he was one of those prospectors who’ve been staying in town this week - one of the boys who nearly slit Mr Ewing’s throat.”

 

He seems to think on this a moment, and then asks “in town, you say - not here at Ms Josie’s?”

 

“Not here, no,” she confirms. 

 

Sheriff Murdock exchanges a glance with his Deputy and Mr Foggy sorely shakes his head.

 

“Tried for a room,” Ms Josie puts in, “and I said we were full. Told ‘em they could come and drink all they liked so long as they behaved themselves, not much good that did, but if they wanted lodgings, they’d have to go up to Fisk’s old place.”

 

The Sheriff’s face goes hard then, like a block of old cheese, his hands falling to his hips and he frowns at Ms Josie.

 

“Now, you sure that was wise?”

 

“Boys like that, they’re bound to find their way over there without me leading the way,” Ms Josie says completely unflapped.

 

“You knew they were trouble - too much trouble to put up here, and yet you sent them to Ms Natchios?” The Sheriff says sternly.

 

“Like I said, they were gonna end up there anyway,” Ms Josie says. “Sides, there’s nothing Madam E can’t handle. Thought I was tougher than shit but I got nothing on her. Surely I don’t gotta tell you that Sheriff.”

 

The frown on the Sheriff’s face seems only to grow deeper, and he fixes his gaze on Ms Josie.

 

“And surely I don’t gotta remind you that’s no kind of talk to be had in present company,” he says.

 

“You asked, sugar,” Ms Josie huffs, taking another swig of gin before shoving the cork down tight with her thumb.

 

“I appreciate the gesture, Sheriff,” Miss Karen says, cutting clear through the tension, “but if it’s the brothel you’re talking about - it ain’t no secret, I know it’s there just like everyone else in this town.”

 

That gives the Sheriff pause, and he clears his throat, adam’s apple bobbing like he ain’t half ruffled.

 

“Yes,” he says, “I suppose you’re right, Miss Page,” and then he sighs, “but that don’t make it any more fit for ears as sweet as yours.”

 

“That’s quite alright,” she says, “you’ll do yourself a nuisance if you go worrying about all the things my ears have heard.”

 

The Sheriff chuckles and every hard line that had crossed his handsome face all but melts away. 

 

“Miss Page,” he says, laying a warm hand over hers, “it’d be my sincere pleasure to worry about you.”

 

Miss Karen smiles back at him politely, It’s a kind gesture - kind words from a kind man, but whatever the Sheriff might think, she can take care of herself.

 

-

 

When Sheriff Murdock leaves, Miss Karen makes a fresh pot of coffee. Partly because getting up and doing something has always done a hell’ve a lot more to calm her nerves than sitting still ever could, and because Mr Foggy looks like he could use one.

 

She pushes the steaming cup across the bar urging him to drink, and gives him a gentle smile.

 

It’s a rare thing, but this morning he don’t got one to return.

 

“You alright there, Deputy,” she asks watching him blow the steam off the top and looking down into his drink like it might tell him the secrets of the stars and then some.

 

“I should be the one asking you, Miss Page,” he says like he’s ashamed of himself for forgetting his manners.

 

“Don’t you go worrying, Mr Foggy,” she says.

 

“You’re much too good a woman, Miss Page,” he sighs, “and this is a whole lot of bad business.”

 

“Tell me about it,” she says offhand - and it comes as a bit of a shock when he does.

 

The Deputy has a lot to say, and most of it’s about Mr Grote.

 

He says when they took him down to the Sheriff’s the night of the shoot out at Josie’s, Mr Grote came willing, more than willing, really - that he walked right through the door and into the iron cell, closed the gate and asked for the key. He’d said this was the safest place he could be when a dead man was on his trail.

 

Miss Karen ain’t surprised, if Mr Grote was cowardly enough to shoot and old lady, just ‘cause he’d said she seen something she ain’t meant to, he sure wouldn’t be brave enough to take on someone his own size.

 

And then he’d told the town about those men hiding out in the mountains.

 

After the town hall, they’d dragged him back to the sheriff’s station and kept him talking til his jaw was sore.

 

Mr Grote told ‘em how he met up with Wayne Cooper and his men on his first week out of town and they took him back to their camp. How they told him, there were little bands like this, here and there - how they said if he was gonna make a life out there, picking off the people fool enough to take the road out west, he better keep his head down or the ghost would find him.

 

Mr Grote had told the Sheriff it sounded like a load of swill, that he didn’t believe a word of it, only thing was, a week later, every last word had rung true.

 

The ghost had found ‘em alright, Mr Grote said, followed them through the hills to their hideout and shot ‘em up while they sat round the campfire talking about feather beds and titties and other things you start to miss when you live on the road.

 

Mr Foggy blushes scarlet, repeating this part of the story, and Miss Karen does him a favour and grabs a rag to wipe down the bartop until the tips of his ears don’t look so pink.

 

Mr Grote had gotten away by the skin of his teeth, the only one at that camp having the sense to lay down and play dead when the shooting had started. He’d found a spot to hide, ate bugs and drank all the rain water he could catch in his boot but it hadn’t taken long until the dead man had caught up his scent and chased him right back into town.

 

“And now,” Mr Foggy says, hanging his head, “Sheriff Murdock just don’t know what to do about him.”

 

“He’s a killer,” Miss Karen says without thinking.

 

“Who?” Mr Foggy asks, swirling the dregs of coffee in his mug and waving his hand when she offers to fill it again. “Mr Grote or the dead man they say comes to punish their sins?”

 

Miss Karen don’t know what to think.

 

There’s a whole lotta wrong, on both sides, and she knows it ain’t right to take another life, but she also knows sometimes you just don’t get a choice.

 

“How’re they living up there?” She asks instead. “Surely they can’t all be hiding out waiting for the next wagon to roll by.”

 

Mr Foggy shrugs.

 

“It’s just another piece of the pie,” he says. “Mr Grote seems to think someone in town’s been helping ‘em.”

 

“No,” she says feeling her heart sink, her belly churn in disgust at the thought of someone going outta their way to keep the hills alive with bandits and scum.

 

She thinks of Mr Castle, his family and their home that never was.

 

“That’s just not right, Mr Foggy,” she says, pulling her shawl around her arms, hugging herself tight.

 

The Deputy seems to catch a little of the sorrow that’s come over her, and he covers one of her hands with his own.

 

“People don’t tend to think right when there’s gold involved,” he sighs and pats the back of her hand. “Mr Grote told us at least half of them bandits have turned to prospecting - they’ve been bringing the gold in, trading it for guns and bullets and who knows what else.”

 

Her eyes open wide at the sound of the word.

 

“Prospecting?” Miss Karen repeats and Mr Foggy nods.

 

“That’s what Mr Grote said, and until those men turned up dead at your door, we weren’t sure whether he was telling tales or not - still aren’t.”

 

“I think he’s telling the truth,” she says, biting her lip and trying to stop the image of a mangled dead body from creeping up behind her eyes.

 

“Maybe so,” Mr Foggy sighs, “only real way of knowing is go out there to see for ourselves.”

 

-

 

She takes a bottle of whiskey over to Doctor Temple’s that afternoon.

 

Josie’s Saloon isn’t officially closed or anything, but it seems that finding two corpses out back is enough to put people off their drink. That hadn’t stopped Ms Josie sending her to work though, and she’d reminded Miss Karen about taking spirits over to the Doctor’s office.

 

The wind is crisp and swirling, catching up dirt, crisp leaves and dry grass, blowing pretty little bits of autumn all up and down the main street. Still, as pretty as it is, it’s getting colder and Miss Karen knows all too soon, she’ll be trading in her soft cotton shawl for the thick woolen one that lays in the trunk at the end of her bed.

 

She pulls up her shawl to keep the chill of her neck and the wind out of her hair, quickening her steps and as she passes the post office, Miss Karen comes to a clear stop, staring at the picture pasted to the window.

 

WANTED it says in black lettering so big she can read it from the street.

 

She passes by the the general store, the barber’s, and the Land Claims office and there in each window, over and over and over is the same poster.

 

Dr Temple has one in her window too, and before Miss Karen goes inside, she stops to read the finer print.

 

WANTED, it says at the top, for the murders of Wayne Cooper, Alonzo Harding, Richard ‘Blue Ricky’ Dutton and Virgil Wicket - AND - for the attempted murder of Elliot Grote.

 

$1000$ REWARD it says below, for any information leading to the capture of FRANK CASTLE aka ‘the ghost of the willow’ aka ‘the dead man walking’ aka ‘the punisher’ - be warned he is ARMED and DANGEROUS.

 

She reaches out a hand and lays her fingers on the place where his name is written - Mr Castle, Frank Castle.

 

There’s a little jangle of bells as Dr Temple opens the door, and Miss Karen snatches her hand away, tucking it under her arm like it’d been there all the while.

 

“A bit sensational isn’t it,” Dr Temple says, frowning at the poster. “Didn’t have a face to put to his name and they drew that instead.”

 

“It’s awful,” Miss Karen says, looking away from the poster. There’s no face to tell the people of Hell’s Canyon who they’re looking for and how could there be? She’s got to be the only person who’s seen him in years and lived to tell the tale.

 

Not that she’s said a word.

 

In the place of a man’s likeness or his photograph, there’s nothing but a drawing of an empty white skull.

 

“I don’t know what they were thinking,” the Doctor tuts, shaking her head “Calling him a ghost and a dead man and then giving him the face of a demon.”

 

Miss Karen nods, her eyes fixed on the poster, and the Doctor goes on.

 

“The Sheriff might be after him, but Murdock didn’t make this trash - no, I’ll bet you anything it was Ellison.”

 

“You think so?” Miss Karen asks, surprised.

 

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good man, but he likes to get the town good and riled now and then. He does write a newspaper afterall.”

 

I can put two and two together, Mr Ellison had said - Sheriff's looking for a killer, and I know his name.

 

Miss Karen bites her lip, hugs her arms across her chest until she feels the whiskey bottle dig into her side and remembers why she came in the first place.

 

She clears her throat.

 

“Just like you asked,” she says, handing it over to Dr Temple. “Enough alcohol to flush a wound, and it don’t taste half bad either.”

 

“Good,” the Doctor laughs, “my patients won’t have nothing to complain about whether I’m pouring it on their flesh or in their mouths.”

 

Miss Karen tries for a smile, but she just can’t seem to make her mouth do the job.

 

“You alright?” Dr Temple asks. “I heard you were the one who found the bodies out back of Josie’s this morning.”

 

She hugs herself a little tighter, and nods.

 

“Sheriff figure out who they were?”

 

Miss Karen has nothing to say to that and she tells the doctor so. 

 

“You can rest upstairs if you like,” Dr Temple offers, opening the door to her office and setting the little bells jangling again. “I’d send you home to bed, but I don’t imagine you’d want be over there right about now.”

 

Miss Karen manages a smile this time, feeling warmed at the care of her friend.

 

“I’m fine,” she says, even though she ain’t quite sure if it’s the truth or not.

  
  


The Doctor goes inside, leaving Miss Karen standing a moment alone outside her office.

 

She doesn’t want to look at that poster, but that hollowed eyed skull seems to be staring right at her, making her skin crawl.

 

There’s a tumble of something uneasy in her belly, and she knows if she tries to make her feet do any walking just now, they’re gonna carry her right over to Mr Ellison’s and demand to know just what business he had making such an awful thing.

 

She ain’t quite sure just what it is she’s feeling right now but she knows it don’t feel good - whether it’s the damn poster, or the face of a bloody corpse that just won’t leave her mind’s eye, she can’t say. And what’s more, she don’t trust her feet to take her any place she’s got business going.

 

Talking to Mr Ellison would only bring on heaps of trouble - the kind of trouble she had meant to be getting away from, not running into headlong. Sure the poster was sensational, gruesome even - but she doubts there’s a single word of a lie printed on the page.

 

And that’s something that don’t make Miss Karen feel too good neither.

 

-

**Author's Note:**

> All my love to PunkyNemo (thevampirecat) for holding my hand and kicking my arse to make this happen.


End file.
